It's not any one thing. It's never one thing. All the things that have led up to my crisis of caring are old things; have been around a long time and I've been aware of all of them all along. Whether things have become so crazy that some trigger point was passed or whether being chronically weak because of a strict diet or a passing virus or whether somehow, the realization that all suffering comes from believing, from having faith that things can ever be all right in the long run, finally seeped through from that repository of things I always say to whatever core of self awareness exists deep down somewhere.
The thing is -- I just don't care. Neither more or less than the last time I said it, but I don't care. Someone apparently got away with murder? What's it to me? My country is making strides toward being neo-feudal, toward a police state, a corporate oligarchy with no collective concern for anything but maximum profit and maximum exploitation by those who can make the most of it? So what? The great accomplishments of science? That's over, unless it's the science of sales and manipulation and the technology that exists only to make people buy it. I don't give a damn. I don't even give a damn that I don't give a damn and I've forgotten why I ever believed in the progress of man and the slow climb up from the insanity of animals toward enlightenment and civilization -- or even decency.
But it's always something.
I got a phone call the other day. It was a recorded voice asking to contribute to the fight against the persecution of Christian parents' rights to raise their families as they saw fit. I have no idea what they meant but I can have some confidence in the assumption that it has to do with interfering with some other group's right to do the same. I pushed the "never call me again" button. I don't care, it's someone else's fight after all, and if they do win, it will take so long they might as well just wait for the next asteroid or gamma ray burst or solar catastrophe.
I got a flier in the mail too. Cover photos of grey haired people smiling like they were drugged under a headline of "happy Seniors." Now I hate like hell to be called a 'senior' and it damned well is a gratuitous pejorative. I'm still a man and no less entitled to be one than when I was an idiot teenager, fulfilling my duty of buying things to be hip. But no, these happy folks were just in Ecstasy because Representative Tom Rooney and his friends Mr. Ryan and Governor "Medicare Fraud" Scott were going to keep Medicare and Social security from being taken over by "unelected bureaucrats" and presumably given over to those entitled by party affiliation to a big Goddamn profit from it. You know, the Republican peerage, the elect. Happy, happy days, but I'm not going to be able to do a damn thing so why worry?
I bought one of these little flat screen portable HDTV's recently. Figured it would be a good thing for hurricane season, but trying it out today, I was was disappointed to find nothing on the air but Jesus and informercials, but I shouldn't be, of course. That's all there really is in this episode of the Truman Show and all there will be allowed to be because all this amazing technology has no other purpose than to sell to those at the bottom of the pond. The people already borrowing at 400% from Wells Fargo payday loan stores to meet the mortgage payment to Wells Fargo Bank and the credit cards they maxed out at Wal-Mart and who just found out they have to die because they have no insurance and can't even get welfare because they can't pass a drug test because they had to take something for the pain and they can't afford a prescription or prescription drugs. Yes, it's gonna be all right after we 'save' Medicare.
Some "Practicing physician" as he continually reminded me had the ultimate cure and preventative for heart disease which "we now know" is only caused by "Toxins" that need to be chelated out of our blood stream with his snake oil pills. " I don't wancha getting a bypass. I don't wancha getting a stent" He just wants to sell pills that will stop the "epidemic of sickness overwhelming all of us." It would take more than a pill to stop the irony, but nothing will stop the two born every minute.
Another channel appeared to be a cooking channel, showing children how to cover apple slices with sugar sprinkles because, as the nice Church lady tells us, "God wants children to eat healthy food" unless of course the fruit contains knowledge of morality. Perhaps that's why so many children are hungry - not enough red and green sprinkles -- or maybe, like me, God doesn't give a shit -- at least not as long as he sells enough air time. And he does sell it. Four stations available on the indoor antenna and three of them have Jesus, or at least so they say. They don't show him, but perhaps he's tied up in the back room while those polyester puffballs strut and parade and chant and solicit money. JEE- Suss! wants you to be rich so buy my prayer towel and my blessing -- call now.
So why feel sorry for myself. I don't need to if I don't care. I don't feel sorry for America either, they're fed all the crap they can chew on and they will die, or at least make sure you do, rather than make anything better. If I feel sorry for anyone it's people like poor old Jesus who not only thought they could, but tried -- only to be defeated, have their history stolen and used to sell product, to support tyranny and exploitation and persecution, the fleecing of the poor, the fearful, the desperate and to stifle knowledge, damn decency and prostitute hope.
But who cares?
8 comments:
I never read Dante but that reminds me of it anyway
Dante had hope.
I'm with you, Captain. What's the point in caring when the chances of major changes are quite slim?
Between our bought-and-paid-for government on national and state levels, media that largely do nothing more than to transcribe talking points, and an ignorant electiorate, hope can't survive.
Congratulations. As a dissident, you, of course, are MEANT to feel impotent. You are MEANT to see resistance as futile. 200 channels of nothing but Jeebus and bottled blondes hawking right wing prpoganda is MEANT to make you feel marginalized. Just as the omnipresence of the Dear Leader's face ande the obligatory participation in the Party Rally are MEANT to make the dissident in the totalitarian regime understand he is weak and alone.
What you are SUPPOSED to do next is withdraw into some comfy cocoon, read your little leftie magazines and bask in the secret knowledge of your superiority to the common herd, while the people who matter dismantle your society.
Anonymouse,
"little leftie magazines"
I'm just a pinko, commie, leftist who is apparently behind on his subscriptions to controlled left wing thought.
Could you name a few of those mags so that I may get my subscriptions going and catch up?
Troll Killer
Ah, you beat me to that one. Leftie magazines indeed. There's no more predictable or pathetic argument and isn't it ironic that the people facilitating their own destruction are meant to ignore anything constructive or objective or informed or evidence oriented as "leftie" or even more vague: "Liberal?"
Yes, little leftie magazines I read; like Naval History, QST, CQ, Smithsonian, Nature. . . Science is liberal you know.
I never suggested I was giving up, it's a fight worth fighting even with no hope of success, even if the smug and the stupid will always be in the majority; even if there's a sucker born every minute and two to take him. It's like mosquitoes, you know. They'll be here after we're gone, but we still swat them when we can.
Glad to see you are still alive and kickin as well, Fogg. You gave all the good reasons why living outside of the US is so much better. I don't miss it at all.
I envy you Brian, and I've been spending more and more time abroad these days. I'll be off to the Abacos as soon as the boat yard finishes installing my new props.
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